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Hillenbrand's first book was the acclaimed Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001), a nonfiction account of the career of the great racehorseSeabiscuit, for which she won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2001. She says she was compelled to tell the story because she "found fascinating people living a story that was improbable, breathtaking and ultimately more satisfying than any story [she'd] ever come across."[1] She first told the story through an essay, "Four Good Legs Between Us", that was published in American Heritage magazine,[2] and the feedback was positive, so she decided to proceed with a full-length book.[1] The book received positive reviews for the storytelling and research.[3][4] It was made into the Academy Award nominated film Seabiscuit (2003).

These two books have dominated the best seller lists in both hardback and paperback. Combined, they have sold more than 10 million copies.[6]

Hillenbrand's essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Equus magazine, American Heritage, The Blood-Horse, Thoroughbred Times, The Backstretch, Turf and Sport Digest, and other publications. Her 1998 American Heritage article on the horse Seabiscuit won the Eclipse Award for Magazine Writing.[7][8]

Hillenbrand is a co-founder of Operation International Children.[9][10]

Her writing style belongs to a new school of nonfiction writers, who come after the New Journalism, focusing more on the story than a literary prose style:

Hillenbrand belongs to a generation of writers who emerged in response to the stylistic explosion of the 1960s. Pioneers of New Journalism like Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer wanted to blur the line between literature and reportage by infusing true stories with verbal pyrotechnics and eccentric narrative voice. But many of the writers who began to appear in the 1990s ... approached the craft of narrative journalism in a quieter way. They still built stories around characters and scenes, with dialogue and interior perspective, but they cast aside the linguistic showmanship that drew attention to the writing itself.[6]

Hillenbrand was born in Fairfax, Virginia, the daughter and youngest of four children of Elizabeth Marie Dwyer, a child psychologist, and Bernard Francis Hillenbrand, a lobbyist who became a minister.[11][12][13] Hillenbrand spent much of her childhood riding bareback "screaming over the hills" of her father's Sharpsburg, Maryland, farm.[14] A favorite childhood book of hers was Come On Seabiscuit.[14] "I read it to death, my little paperback copy," she says.[14] She studied at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, but was forced to leave before graduation when she contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, with which she has struggled ever since.[15] She now lives in Washington, D.C, and rarely leaves her house because of the condition.[15] Hillenbrand married Borden Flanagan, a professor of government at American University and her college sweetheart, in 2006.[15] In 2014, they separated after 28 years as a couple, living in separate homes.[6]

She described the onset and early years of her illness in an award-winning[16][17][18] essay, A Sudden Illness.[19][20] The disease still structures her life as a writer, keeping her mainly confined to her home. She reads old newspaper articles by buying the old newspapers or borrowing them from libraries, and does all her interviews with living persons by telephone.[10][6]

On the irony of writing about physical paragons while being so incapacitated herself, Hillenbrand says, "I'm looking for a way out of here. I can't have it physically, so I'm going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination. And it's just fantastic to be there alongside Louie as he's breaking the NCAA mile record. People at these vigorous moments in their lives - it's my way of living vicariously."[15]

In a 2014 interview, Bob Schieffer said to Laura Hillenbrand: To me your story – battling your disease ….is as compelling as his (Louis Zamperini’s) story.[21]